it drives me crazy

early morning chestnutscape / window boxes still blooming / Missy D on the boardwalk / Hey tree ! I love you / my girl Dee / window @ Monty's emporium of vintage & secondhand goodness / Winnie & her l-o-n-g shadow / horseshoe chestnut / more windowbox love / lilliput zinnias / more shadows / & Missy Dee one more time ♡♡♡

An idea can only become a reality once it is broken 
down into organized, actionable elements.

Scott Belsky from Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

Coming up with idea(s) is only half the battle, in fact it's maybe only 1/10th of the battle - such a great subtitle to Scott Belsky's book Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality - 'cause overcoming the many obstacles is how true creative breakthroughs arrive & stick around 'til the end .

You can have the most fabulous vision in the world but if you can't figure out how to execute that vision, preferably with a step by step action plan, maybe divided into a few categories ... a critical path (as the Prince likes to call his every single project Action Steps list) ... if you can't figure out the "how" of turning vision into reality, well you're screwed (pardon my francais).

This pre-plan, the pre-critical path, action steps stage I like to call the creative crevasse. You know like those seemingly bottomless gaping slits in the ice that mountain climbers sometimes fall into. This is the deep ditch of the creative process - the omg ! I have this fantastic vision in my head, it's all like blue sky & beautiful & it's gonna be awesome but damned if I can figure out how I'm actually going to make it (a reality). X that beautiful, blow-your-socks off creative vision by 15 realities and omg just doesn't cut it, it's much more of an oh my ____! situation.

After spending nearly a month in the beautiful blue sky visioning phase of my new thrilling BIG project, I slipped and fell into the deep, deep ditch of omg ! I can't do this ! why did they pick me ? are they nuts ? blah, blah, blah, yada yada yada negative chatter and paralyzing fear for days ... and days. Finally I managed to creep and crawl my way back up and out of that deep crevasse of insecurity and imminent failure, met my breakthrough train at the station with cow bells on and now I'm into les action steps. PHEw ! or is that WHEw ! I swear it seems to me like that darn Ditch is a necessary precursor to les creative critical path. Is it just me ? or does it seem as if the deeper the fall into the ditch, the more creative the action steps become and thus more fantastic the reality is in the end. Like some freakin' torture cycle.

ideas, planning, vision + terror, fear, resistance + action, more action + lots o' creativity = fabulous reality

It drives me crazy !